Jeff Peckman told the Wall Street Journal his Denver Initiative 300 was a sorely needed job-maker. He said “sci-fi film directors” would flock here as well as “space-travel researchers, and engineers hoping to pry the secrets of intergalactic technology from space visitors.”

More than 80 percent of voters rejected Denver Initiative 300, some saying it would have made a laughingstock out of the city.

The measure drew national attention as an example of the absurdity of politics and government programs and it underlined the loose ballot initiative process in Colorado generally, where Denver voters reckoned not only with the space alien commission proposal but also a raft of state initiatives against taxes of all sorts and abortion and federal health care reform legislation. This year, most all of those initiatives ended up on the scrap heap with the ET proposal.

If nothing else, the initiative was forward thinking. As the Denver Post pointed out, the ballot language allowed that members of the proposed commission “who are not Denver residents may participate from anywhere in the universe by any means available.”